My Recipe

Different type of story I've written today! Hope you all enjoy it!

                I’ve recently been occupying myself with some shows in the wee hours of the night. I watch during the time where most people in this world of ours are busy indulging themselves in their dream world and the restless like me sit and enjoy shows that they would otherwise not enjoy. 

                Simply put I believe that I myself am an insomniac. I spend many hours watching useless infomercials for products I will never purchase, old TV sitcoms which I will never understand, and commercials that I will never recall. It’s during this time that my mind is at its most vulnerable.  Unlike shows I watch in the afternoon or early evening, I don’t attempt to comprehend every detail in which is conveyed to me. I do the opposite. 

                I attempt to compare things that I watch to other things that might otherwise not be related in any way, shape, or form. In essence it’s how I exercise my creativity. That is how I came up with my recipe for happiness.

                I was channel surfing one night when I came upon the food network program which depicted a rather plain looking woman making herself a complicated dish. I do not recall the dish anymore but I do recall how complicated it was and how she kept reminding her audience to take extra vigilance when doing the dish. Apparently one mistake and it could make the dish rather disgusting. I myself not being much of a chef found this strange. I never would have assumed that cooking had the same static characteristics as that of a mathematical equation.

 I decided to try out my new found discovery by making something significantly simpler, Peanut butter cookies. Like I had mentioned before, I am not much of a chef, so I had to Google the recipe and find the simplest way to make these cookies. After numerous hours of being sidetracked I finally came across a rather simple recipe that required very little steps. I decided to make haste and create these soon to be delicious creations that I could devour. 

The recipe itself scrutinized just how exact I had to be with the measurements, which further solidified my belief that cooking was exactly like math. So I followed the steps, used the proper measuring tools and applied the perfect temperature and eventually all the gooey cookies I had molded with my hands of absolute creation had been prepped for cooking. I was ecstatic to say the least. Do bear in mind that beforehand I had not eaten for 2 days straight for some forgotten reason, so these cookies were looking already delicious raw and doughy.

Now my readers, comes the sad part. I had put them into the oven and smiled to myself over the extremely excellent job I had done producing said peanut butter cookies, when suddenly I re-read the recipe and came across a grave fatal mistake that I had done. There had been a footnote at the bottom of the page I had printed out regarding my peanut butter cookie recipe! It read, 

“Caution only use Smooth peanut butter, not crunchy peanut butter.”

 This was around the time I panicked, everything I had worked for was now destroyed because of some foolish blunder! Oh how I had wished I read everything over three times instead of two and caught my fatal mistake before I had placed my cookies into the oven.  I panicked and grabbed the oven handle opening it the door with complete panic and zest.

I stared at the cookies basking in the warm glow of the interior of my oven, like calm brown rocks sleeping underneath the warm sun.  I promptly closed the oven door and shrugged, walking away from the oven and sitting back down upon my couch.

                I had learned a lesson that day, a very important lesson. There are only two things in life that don’t let you make mistakes, University Professors and Women. Don’t let the little things bug you like that; mistakes are but a window showing you into the correct path. I smiled to myself, bit into one of my scrumptious peanut butter cookies and realized just how amazing of a chef I am.

Strange First Impressions

It was high-noon when she came around. At the time we only knew each other by the pensive glances we gave when dragged around by our overly-vivacious parents. But it was to change today. I knew her from around already; she was of the high class families, the ones who owned the automobiles, and big houses. They acted like they were above our Lord. And for that, I was taught to despise her. It was all quite depressing really.

I sat upon a green little hill. The village was abundant with them. But this particular hill looked down upon half the village. This half of the village housed the forbidden Billiard place, the place that housed many good and many horrible memories. But they were MY memories, and it saddened me that I was reduced to looking from afar. It was during my little nostalgic moment that she walked up to my hill to me – no she strode up with her stridey little stride.

"Hello Miss," I said, being careful not to show any sense of disposition.

"Spare the pleasantries Ren, I already know who you are," She replied, taking her place next to me.

"I was just in the middle of prayer; would you care to join me?" I asked, expecting the answer already.

"Oh please, how very quaint," She laughed.

Although I expected her to do such a thing, It was against my nature the simply take an insult to the lord like that. Was this a cross-road in which I picked the right, or wrong path?

    "Holy Mary, mother of God," I began, "Pray for You sinner,"

    "Hah Hah," She laughed yet again, not understanding the magnitude of her problem.

    "You! Miss," I suddenly said, stopping my prayer, "What is your name?"

    "You know my name Ren, everyone knows my name!" She laughed again, that shrill stupid laugh.

    "That is what Father does when he is trying to be stern with someone" I replied, red-faced, "Annabella."

    "Don't call me that Ren, only Mommy calls me that, and only when she is angry at something I have done."

    "Is that not your name?" I asked, suddenly noticing her eyes again.

Those eyes, those black, black eyes


"People call me Bella, or Ann, But not Annabella," Then her face lit up, "Oh I do wish people would call me Bell, like that princess!"

"Mommy says that Disney movies are wrong and only a fool watches them," I said, matter-of-factly.

Suddenly Annabella turned red.

"Oh to Hell with your mommy and you,"

I gasped, absolutely struck, absolutely dumbstruck. How could a mere child like herself damn Mother so painfully?

I honestly believed she had morphed into some sort of unholy manifestation, but it turned out to be my own vision. My own vision… Red.

I saw everything happening already… Presque vu… Those eyes, her black eyes, staring, judging, mocking.


 
I hit her.


 
She had sprawled upon the green grass. A rag doll, a marionette who's self-righteous strings were suddenly cut during her beautiful performance. I heard nothing but the raw pounding of anger pumping through my ears. She had not only banished me to hell, but my mother, my precious mother.

    The world had become a flourishing red and green. Everything moved in slow motion, and I couldn't help but stare in agony as Annabella had slowly gotten up, tears streaming down her face. I regretted it, of course I did, and I knew I was going to be punished. But a part of me, a deeper part of me, loved the fact that she had been knocked out of her high, proud stance, forced down to humility like the rest of us. I couldn't help but smile.

The Beginning

 As I leaf back through my memories, I find that given the same opportunities that I had then, added with my lofty knowledge gained only through personal experience, I would have done exactly everything I had done, just probably with a bit more style. I also always find that every time I try to recall these certain memories that twist and turn in the deepest part of my mind, like a labyrinth that has no end, only countless beginnings, they seem to change. No not change, simply waver. Things I deemed certain before seem to change, seem to heighten. Exaggerate. Like a boy, who's one aim in life is to impress his glowing mother… exaggerating… eliciting some extravagant reaction… all for that reaction. What reaction was I aiming for? Well I was seven during that day; at least that I can be certain of…
Seven was when I met my Annabella, the moment still fresh in my rotting mind. A newly vased bouquet of extravagant and thorny blue roses. My Annabella, like that feeling that you just can't explain, but you want very badly to… that was my Annabella.

It seems that when I nostalgise about the past, my memories resemble that of an old film being watched through an older film filter; blurry, out of focus, and infuriatingly sepia. But Annabella, god, she was different; she was my blue rose among a field of red roses. Annabella, her picture, her visage, was driven to me like a proverbial stake, breaking through the norm and hurting me in ways that I would not think would hurt. I close my eyes and she is as exact as she was many years ago. Burned into the deepest darkest catacombs of my mind, eating away at my sanity, a beautiful parasite more than eager to take me away… and what's to say I was not more than willing myself.

I might even go as far as to say that one will not, or has not, experienced true madness without seeing such a phenomenon. Like I said, my memories, and I am sure everyone else's memories are re-conveyed to them in the form of blurry, old
film-esque style. But when I see Annabella in the darkness of my eyelids, her form is true. That image, the first realization that she was mine, I remember everything. She wore her daunting sky blue dress resting upon her like a fitting curtain, with the green printed apples trimming the hem of its skirt. And her hair, she had it drooping lazily off to one side, as if to put it aside to get a better look of me. And her legs, dotted with the childhood injuries that one might expect from a little too much playing. But to me, dotted like the perfect cuts of a coagulated ruby, exhibited for the world to see. And finally… her eyes, those eyes, the eyes, those piercing eyes, blacketh of the night, shadow of the unknown. To me, she had the darkest, most unique eyes. Her pupils, larger than ordinary, but also the darkest shade of brown anyone can ever conceive…one might even call them black. This was not natural… the eyes, the recollection of her image, the darkness. In my mind, she was completely lit against a dark world. As if basking upon some alien light, the world around her black… a world struck with perpetual darkness… a world fated to never experience the light of day again.